China

The Educational Testing Service is canceling all scores on the Graduate Record Examination from China this month because large portions of the test had been used in previous administrations of the exam. While testing companies periodically have to cancel scores when a testing center makes an error or gives an incorrect version of a test, making an error throughout China has major ramifications. About 24,000 test takers -- most of them likely applicants to graduate schools in the United States -- took the GRE this month in China.

Other U.S. colleges have resisted entering into such relationships. Among them, the University of Pennsylvania chose not to apply for a Confucius Institute, partly because it was uncomfortable with the Chinese government's involvement, says G. Cameron Hurst III, a former director of the university's Center for East Asian Studies.

Today, Dr. Eugénie Birch, co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research (IUR), signed a partnership agreement with UN-HABITAT, the UN agency that focuses on urban affairs. The agreement certified the role that the University of Pennsylvania and Penn IUR will play in the World Urban Campaign, which aims to unite the public and private sectors together with civil society, to elevate sustainable urbanization to the top of the agenda for governments around the world.

PHILADELPHIA — The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education-International is partnering with Beijing University and East China Normal University to create the U.S.-China Future Leaders Program to develop close relationships among young leaders and improve mutual understanding and respect.

Twenty students from universities in the U.S. and China are participating in this two-month program. For one month the students will live in China and for one month they will live in the U.S.

With graceful eyelashes, long flaxen hair and serene expression, the "Beauty of Xiaohe" seems to have just softly fallen to sleep-yet she last closed her eyes nearly 4,000 years ago. She was found, and excavated, in 2003,one of hundreds of spectacularly preserved mummies buried in the harsh desert sands of the vast Tarim Basin, in the Far Western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.

PHILADELPHIA (June 7, 2010) – Renmin University in Beijing will begin a health communication program with help from faculty and researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.